


the mutual benefits of falling in love at the same time

by saddermachine



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Falling In Love, M/M, Non AU, Non-Linear Narrative, One Shot, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-05 05:35:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18359663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saddermachine/pseuds/saddermachine
Summary: at some point, donghyuck and jaehyun start sharing a room and at some point, they start falling in love.





	the mutual benefits of falling in love at the same time

**Author's Note:**

> [james acaster voice]: started making it. had a breakdown. bon appetite.

At a crowded dinner table, Donghyuck hooks his foot around Taeyong’s ankle to catch his attention, which is conveniently scattered across most of the living room and the long day they’d just had.

It takes a few extra hard tugs for his eyes to refocus on Donghyuck and when they do his tone is clipped, irritated.

“What?”

Donghyuck leans over his bowl of crudely arranged bibimbap to whisper, “I don’t want to share a room with Mark anymore.”

Taeyong blinks at him. “Why not?”

Shrugging, Donghyuck returns his attention to his food and the conversation ends.

 

*

 

“So” – Jaehyun pats the creased quilt on his bed – “…this is new.”

The room – like most of their cramped little apartment – is an awkward assembly of space, angles and cheap furniture, the architect obviously having designed this building on one of his off-days.

Donghyuck is getting the bed right under the window, which means that he can look up at the stars and freeze and overheat whenever he likes. It’s a pretty sweet deal.

“The quilt?” Donghyuck asks.

“No, no—I mean— _this._ ”

He points at Donghyuck as if he’s something the cat dragged in, but somehow manages to infuse the gesture with an underlying note of kindness that’s so distinctly _Jaehyun_ Donghyuck can practically feel it hitting him squarely in the chest.

“Do you mind?” He asks, trying not to sound like he cares all that much.

“Did I say that?”

Donghyuck squints. He didn’t.

“I suppose not.”

 

*

 

Donghyuck sinks down onto the practice room floor, the rubber soles of his trainers squeaking loudly on his way down. Then he puts his face in his hands and breathes in, stale air filling out his aching lungs until he’s ready to burst.

His exhale syncs up with the squeak of Jaehyun’s shoes as he flops down onto the floor beside him.

He’s started doing that recently. Sitting next to Donghyuck even when most of the room is made up out of free space and plenty of sitting opportunities.

Not that Donghyuck’s complaining.

“Are you okay?”

Squinting up at him between his fingers Donghyuck contemplates this question.

“I’m tired,” he finally admits.

Jaehyun smiles, dimples on full, obnoxious display. “Yeah,” he says, “me too.”

They sit in silence for a while. In the far corner of the room, by the whiteboard and sound system, the others have huddled around for drinks and snacks. Everyone except Taeil, who’s having an impromptu nap, curled up next to the watercooler and Jaehyun and Donghyuck.

“You know,” Jaehyun starts suddenly, startling Donghyuck out of his doze, “I read somewhere that ice cream helps with tiredness. And nerves,” he adds, not quite succeeding at making it sound like an afterthought.

“Where’d you read that? The _Cosmopolitan_?” Donghyuck takes care to slather the word in as good as an American accent as he can manage. The rounded, awkward vowels make Johnny look around in confusion.

“Just” – Jaehyun gestures vaguely – “the internet.”

With that Donghyuck gives up all pretences at disinterest and slumps bonelessly against Jaehyun’s side. His reaction is prompt and very Jaehyun-like, wrapping an arm around Donghyuck’s waist and pulling him even closer, fingers digging into the skin just below Donghyuck’s ribs. His grip is just one squeeze away from being genuinely painful.

He smells like sweat and the expensive sweet ginger conditioner that Sicheng likes to use.

“Hyung, you do realise that you don’t need an excuse to make me eat ice cream with you, right?” He says voice muffled against the damp material of Jaehyun’s shirt.

 

*

 

February is too cold to have ice cream.

Not that that stops them. They trudge through the windy streets, practice clothes stuffed in one bag and each carrying a separate flimsy plastic bag of ice cream and something pseudo-Japanese that Taeyong guilt-tripped them into buying.

Donghyuck’s mouth and the tips of his fingers are blue, one with sticky fake raspberry juice and the other with cold. Wind is whistling high over their heads; grey concrete against a steadily darkening sky.

“Your tongue is blue,” Jaehyun says, his own mouth stained red from his own ice lolly.

Donghyuck pulls a face, contorting his features until it hurts and Jaehyun tells him to stop between wheezes of laughter and underneath the overbearing cold, a warmth of a more metaphorical kind plants a seed in the centre of Donghyuck’s chest.

 

*

 

“I'm tired,” Donghyuck says to no one in particular.

No one's listening anyway. The van is quiet, full to the brim with the communal exhaustion of a bad nine-hour flight. No one's really asleep, but no one’s really awake either.

Donghyuck is fully awake, however. Hungry and tired and aching – both physically and mentally. There’s a cramp in his foot and in the right side of his brain and it’s enough to keep him painfully conscious.

“I’m tired,” he repeats, quieter this time. A little plaintive.

Then a dry, warm hand finds his; fingers tangling clumsily and Donghyuck turns, strangely relieved and unsurprised when he finds Jaehyun next to him. He’s not entirely sure how ended up there. He’s not even sure how they all got into the van – when the airport ended and this end of the trip began.

Airports blur together, but the warm firmness of Jaehyun’s hand in his is enough to centralise Donghyuck a bit. The van feels more real now, more like an actual place than a horrible limbo state of existing on different sides of the globe at the same time.

“Me too,” is Jaehyun’s mumbled response. His eyes are closed, hair messy and unstyled.

Donghyuck stares for a little longer than strictly appropriate, only looking away when a smile twitches at the corners of Jaehyun’s mouth.

“You’re staring,” he whispers, still smiling.

“And you’re an idiot.”

Jaehyun’s grip on his hand tightens and the Sat-Nav announces that they’re two hours away from their final destination.

 

*

 

One bathroom and a half for an apartment of ten people is truly horrible. It’s its own special kind of torture and that one bathroom and a half (the kitchen sink can be used in emergencies) has caused more arguments and almost physical fights than any of them would like to admit.

Two or three at a time. That’s the rule.

Donghyuck and Jaehyun let the others win tonight, which is why they’re slipping and sliding around on the sky blue tiles in their socks at 11 o’clock at night, gurgling and singing along to Jaehyun's easy-listening playlist.

There’s toothpaste dripping down Donghyuck’s chin and Jaehyun’s using his toothbrush as a microphone. His voice is rough with use and there’s a cup of lemon fusion tea waiting for him back in their room, but for now, it doesn’t seem to matter.

“You have” – Jaehyun waves his toothbrush at Donghyuck’s face – “some toothpaste.”

This is redundant since there’s toothpaste literally everywhere, but Donghyuck still finds it within himself to blush and start scrubbing at his face.

Jaehyun hands him a towel and laughs when Donghyuck flicks toothpaste at him.

“Here let me—” he finally says, dropping his own toothbrush into the washbasin and tugging the towel out of Donghyuck’s unresisting hands.

Donghyuck lets him.

 

*

 

In the rain, in a parking lot lit up only by a few sparsely situated street lights Donghyuck balances a half-empty cup of coffee and a packet of chocolate chip cookies in his hands.

 _Five minutes_ , the text from his manager had said.

It’s been fifteen and Donghyuck’s feet are getting numb.

But it could be worse.

“It could be worse,” Jaehyun says, shifting his footing slightly so the umbrella he’s holding covers more of Donghyuck’s right shoulder.

The rain roars –  nature’s own white noise – filling up the cracks and dips in the pavement and gurgling down into the gutters, into the depths below the city.

“Could it?”

Jaehyun nudges him, a playful smile hidden in shadow and Donghyuck sways on the spot.

“Yeah, it could be cold.”

“It _is_ cold,” Donghyuck points out.

“ _Colder,_  then,” Jaehyun amends and adjusts his grip on the umbrella’s handle. The tips of his fingers are blue and his knuckles white with cold and in a moment of either weakness or strength Donghyuck tucks the cookies under one arm and covers Jaehyun’s hand with his own.

“This is stupid,” he mutters under his breath.

Headlights appear in the distance, flickering dimly through the icy sheets of rain and Donghyuck’s grip on Jaehyun’s hand tightens.

“Stupid,” he repeats and some neurons in his brain spark off wrong – or maybe right, it’s hard to tell  – because then he turns around, not very far since they’re both squished under an umbrella together, and leans up and presses a kiss to Jaehyun’s cheek.

The brake lights of the car flash in the gloom and Donghyuck darts out into the downpour before Jaehyun can come up with a reply or an appropriate reaction.

“See you, hyung,” Donghyuck calls through the rain.

Jaehyun waves, stunned but still smiling.

 

*

 

The sky outside is heavy and dark, covering the moon and all his companions and keeping them all wrapped up in a bubble of fluorescent light and icy streets.

It’s not snowing – not yet, at least – but there is a promise in the air.

Donghyuck is lying in bed with his quilt pulled all the way up to his chin, staring up at the dark sky and the lights of the building across from theirs. On the floor directly across from his window a man – a mere silhouette against the warm, yellow light – is pacing around his office, head in his hands.

“Hyung,” Donghyuck’s voice is hoarse and barely audible over the hum of the humidifier in the far corner of the room.

A pause and then:

“Yeah?”

Keeping his gaze focused outside he says, “Come here a sec.”

There’s a rustling of sheets and the sound of soft footfalls and then Donghyuck’s mattress dips as Jaehyun sinks down by Donghyuck’s feet.

“What?”

It has to be around 0 degrees outside but Jaehyun’s sitting there at the foot of Donghyuck’s bed, pyjama trousers riding low on his hips and his chest and torso bare in the pale, blue-ish light from the window.

Donghyuck doesn’t know where to look, so he looks away.

“Two things,” he says, holding up two fingers, “look.”

He points up at the floor above the pacing man’s floor to where a woman is swaying around what looks like a living room, a lump of shadows in her arms. She too is silhouetted against warm light flooding in from a hallway that they can’t see.

They watch in silence for a while and one of Jaehyun’s hands slowly sneaks up to rest by Donghyuck’s foot, fingers pressing into the dip behind his anklebone.

“Are you cold?” He asks as the sky opens up and snow begins to fall in thick, swirling curtains, obscuring the building across the street from view. The woman and her shadow baby disappear and so does the pacing man.

“That was the second thing,” Donghyuck admits, lifting his quilt with a flourish in an attempt to hide how nervous he actually is.

He can see the glint of Jaehyun’s teeth as he grins, clambering over Donghyuck’s legs and slipping underneath the quilt and it’s almost unnerving how quickly the metaphorical frost that had been spreading across his chest and fingers recedes once Jaehyun’s wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled him close.

“You’re not wearing a shirt,” Donghyuck manages to force out of his constricting throat, painfully aware how close his mouth his to the dip and curve of Jaehyun’s collarbone and sternum.

Jaehyun’s grip tightens. “Do you mind?”

Donghyuck tries to think of a coherent answer, but it’s kind of hard to think – let alone be coherent – when a walking furnace has found the hem of your T-Shirt and is currently working on dismantling your sanity.

Cheeks burning he finally says, “N-not really.”

There’s a smile in the kiss Jaehyun presses to his forehead and Donghyuck pokes him under his ribs for his trouble.

 

*

 

“You’re a life-saver, hyung,” Donghyuck sighs when Jaehyun shoulders his way into the hospital room, arms full of assorted foods, chargers and electronics.

Donghyuck makes grabby hands for his DS and presses a wet kiss to the casing when Jaehyun tosses it at him.

The others, Jaehyun informs him, are still downstairs arguing with their manager and trying to wheedle actually edible food out of one of the hospital cafeteria staff. They’ve already raided every vending machine in the building, the evidence of which Jaehyun proudly dumps in Donghyuck’s lap.

“So,” Jaehyun says, “how are you?”

Donghyuck gives him a look and he quickly adds, “Besides the, uh… leg.”

“I’ve been better,” Donghyuck says, with a shrug. “They won’t let me shower or wash yet so I still smell like antiseptic and blood, which is, you know, _fine_.”

His tone makes it quite clear that it is pretty fucking far from fine.

“You still look cute, though,” Jaehyun says, reaching out to pinch Donghyuck’s cheeks.

“I look like a _corpse,_  hyung.”

Jaehyun’s still smiling, eyes bright with mirth and a dollop of sincerity that makes Donghyuck’s insides churn.

“A cute corpse.”

The door bangs open and Yuta and Taeyong come clattering inside, both dressed in assorted bits of the same outfit. Yuta is brandishing a black felt-tip pen like a weapon and Jaehyun wisely ducks out of the way.

As the blanket covering Donghyuck is thrown aside and the others descend onto his tiny cubicle-like room Jaehyun’s hand finds his, unnoticed in the commotion.

 

*

 

Hotels are fun.

They have clean, white sheets, fluffy pillows and bathrobes made of polyester and everyone’s favourite holiday dreams. The windows and TVs are obnoxiously large and the shampoo and shower gel bottles absolutely tiny.

Hotels are fun and sometimes they get things wrong.

 

*

 

“I am _not_ sharing a bed with him,” Doyoung says, arms crossed and lips pulled into a stubborn line.

“Love you too, Doyoung-ie,” Johnny mutters, but he doesn’t sound genuinely upset. Just tired. Tired like the rest of them.

Their manager pinches the bridge of his nose.

“It’s just for three nights,” he says for what is probably the fifth time now.

The hotel staff hover apprehensively in their peripheral vision and with every pointedly cleared throat Donghyuck’s patience wears thinner.

“Yuta kicks in his sleep,” Sicheng says, “I’m not sharing with him.”

“ _Fine,_ ” their manager grits out. “Taeyong? Taeil?”

“No,” they chorus and the other eight groan.

Another cough from the outskirts of their conversation and Donghyuck snaps. He’s tired and somewhere, 93 floors above them there’s a hot shower and a comfortable bed waiting for him.

“Look,” he interrupts, loudly, “Jaehyun-hyung and I will share. Alright? Now can we _please_ get on with this?”

The magnet, that he’s sure someone built into his hand, makes it easy for him to find Jaehyun’s hand in the mad rush for the lift and Jaehyun’s grip is firm and reassuring, even as he presses a silent question into the centre of Donghyuck’s palm.

Squashed together in the lift Mark gives him a funny look through the smudged mirrored wall and Donghyuck bares his teeth, too exhausted to be amenable.

 

*

 

On the third night – the last night of the queen-sized bed – Donghyuck showers and googles _blanket forts_.

Several futile attempts are made and one ruined hotel room later Donghyuck finds himself tangled in more sheets than he thought they had, flushed and shrieking as Jaehyun launches his four-thousandth attack.

He’s got a pillow as a weapon and determination in his heart, but Jaehyun has height and strength on his side and Donghyuck soon finds himself darting around the room, ducking out of Jaehyun’s reach with gleeful taunts and shouts of laughter.

Outside the sun’s already set, orange and pink magnificence making way for a dark, foreboding blue and stunning aquamarine. Stars speckle the sky and it takes just one especially bright one – Donghyuck suspects it’s Sirius – to distract him and then Jaehyun’s got him, tackling him to the floor with a victorious sound somewhere between a shout, a laugh and a growl.

With a little struggling on Donghyuck’s part, Jaehyun lets him roll over onto his back.

It’s a decision he regrets, just a little because Jaehyun is bearing down on him, breathing heavily with his eyes bright and an unseen smile hiding somewhere in the corners of his mouth and Donghyuck suddenly lacks the mental capacity to string together even half a coherent thought.

“Hi,” he says, voice embarrassingly small.

Jaehyun grins down at him.

“Hi,” he echoes.

And maybe those magnets in their hands are more of a whole body thing because the space between them is closing pretty quickly and Donghyuck’s mind is racing.

Racing and filling up with useless things like the fact that the curtains are open and that Orion is clearly visible over the sea. And that there are little specks of amber around Jaehyun’s pupils and that he’s stolen Sicheng’s conditioner again and the smell of ginger and sugar is making Donghyuck’s head swim in a pleasantly fuzzy kind of way.

“The door’s not locked,” he finally manages to say through the cotton in his brain.

"Yeah?" Jaehyun says softly.

Donghyuck nods, speech finally failing him.

He can hear Frank Ocean murmuring his way through a sweet, airy song floating through the right-hand wall and he can see the millimetres disappearing between them. He can see Jaehyun's smile growing.

His heart is swelling and a protest and a plea are fighting a pointless battle in his throat.

“Someone could come in,” he whispers, barely audible over the hammering of his own heart echoing through his blood.

“I have quick reflexes,” Jaehyun says and Donghyuck has enough sense to land a well-deserved kick on his shin.

“ _Idiot_ ,” he mutters and laughs when Jaehyun caves, both literally and figuratively.

The kiss is a little clumsy at first because there’s still some laughter trapped in Donghyuck’s throat, but soon enough it evolves into something that has something like electricity sparking down Donghyuck’s spine.

When Jaehyun folds down onto his elbows Donghyuck arches up to meet him, arms wrapping around his shoulders like he’s seen people in films do.

“Was that your first kiss?” Jaehyun asks once they come up for air.

He’s peppering little distracting kisses along the hinge of Donghyuck’s jaw and the line of his throat.

“You wish,” Donghyuck laughs.

“Second, then?”

Donghyuck shakes his head. “Third,” he admits, too happy to be embarrassed.

“I’m your _third_ kiss?”

“Yeah?” Donghyuck cocks his head; a silent challenge. “And what am I?”

Jaehyun nudges the collar of his shirt down with his teeth and Donghyuck has to physically restrain himself from making a noise.

“My favourite kiss,” he murmurs against Donghyuck’s skin.

And that’s just disgusting and horrible and incredibly cheesy and Donghyuck tries to tell him so, but his sentences get lost on their way and his head and heart are full and Jaehyun is a ridiculously good kisser because _of course, he is._

**Author's Note:**

> cheesy summary? cheesy title? cheesy ending? i think i've checked all the boxes? 
> 
> anyway thank you to everyone who yelled at me on twitter, i hope this meets your expectations <3
> 
>  
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/saddermachine)


End file.
